This invention relates to the close interconnection of electrical housings by discrete electrical conductors which supply both the structural framework and the electrical connections for the resulting combination. The individual housings may contain either active or passive electrical components. Interconnection of corresponding elements or terminal positions on the several housings is accomplished with this invention. This invention is especially useful with devices containing numerous aligned electrical contact points.
One of the particularly attractive uses of this invention relates to the fabrication of connector assemblies for making tap connections with the conductors in a multi-conductor cable. A multi-contact connector of the type disclosed and claimed in U.S. Pat. 3,760,335 is utilized in making these tap connections. This connector contains a plurality of terminals located in two parallel rows and is designed to facilitate mass application of wires to the terminals.
Three or more of these individual connectors are joined by conductors to form this tap-connector device. U.S. Pat. No. 3,866,292 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,866,295 disclose two connector assemblies incorporating features of the three-connector assembly disclosed herein. The apparatus disclosed and claimed in those applications as well as that disclosed and claimed in U.S. Pat. 3,816,897 are efficient means by which these connector assemblies can be fabricated. U.S. Pat. 3,824,530 discloses an operation which permits fabrication of these assemblies using continuous electrical wires.
The tap-connector device or bridging adapter disclosed herein can be used with multi-conductor cable, such as 25 pair jacketed switchboard cable used extensively in telephone equipment. Such cable is used, for instance, on customer premises for connection to 5 button telephones and call directors. A branch connection to a second location can be made at a location near the principal telephone by using such a tap-connector device. It would be thus become unnecessary to run an additional length of cable back to the principal terminal location. For such a use, two individual connectors would be installed at some point in the cable and the tap-connector device would be employed with these connectorized cable ends.
The individual electrical connectors used as components of this invention are particularly well adapted for connectorization of such cable. The technique of inserting individual conductors into a wire receiving terminal slot so that the insulation is displaced and electrical contact established is used with this connector. The connector is therefore especially adapted for either on-the-spot or in-plant installation. The tap-connector device which is the subject of the invention can then be readily employed with newly connectorized cable ends or with standard cable lengths. Numerous combinations of mating connectors can be employed on the cable ends, the tap-connector device, and the newly added branch or tap. One of the advantages of this invention is that it can be easily supplied in any one of these imaginable configurations. In addition to being used singly to establish one tap, a plurality of these tap-connectors could be grouped together to provide multiple branches from a single cable at a given location. Indeed, a quite complex interconnection system could be constructed using only tap-connectors of this type.
It is not difficult to visualize the advantages to be gained by joining three multi-contact connectors to form a tap connection for multi-conductor cable. The difficulty lies in the fabrication of such a device. Corresponding terminals must be connected by conductors in such a manner as to leave the mating ends of the connectors free. One method is to employ discrete wires running directly between wire-receiving portions of terminals in each pair of connectors. The wires may either be inserted into wire-receiving terminals in some manner or a conventional soldering technique may be used. It would be difficult to provide both ease of assembly and a device of the minimum dimensions by employing such a technique. This difficulty is even more evident when physical considerations necessitated by standard electrical connectors are examined. If parallel rows of electrical terminals are employed, wires used to connect corresponding terminals must at some point cross each other, thus complicating the insertion or soldering operations. A chain of several connectors joined by continuous wires could be constructed using a technique similar to that disclosed in the U.S. Pat. 3,824,530. These terminals are affixed to wires intermediate their ends so that terminals in more than two connectors could be affixed to the same continuous wire. Even with that technique, however, it is still difficult to attain both ease of assembly and minimum dimensions, since connectors must be located at the same position along two groups of wires and some slack must be allowed for completion of the insertion operation.
The present invention provides for both ease of assembly and minimum dimensions. The basic tap-connector device disclosed herein incorporates three-multi-contact connectors closely grouped together in a T-shaped cluster with individual, continuous wires joining corresponding terminals of the three connectors. The three-connector package is compact and interlacing wires following relatively direct paths between connectors. The wires are so short that there is virtually no movement of any one connector with respect to the other two or with respect to the entire package. The wires are almost wholly contained within the center portion bounded by adjacent sides of the three connectors. The mating faces of the individual connectors face outward from the center portion for easy connection with mating connectors mounted on multi-conductor cable. This close spacing is achieved by first using assembly apparatus capable of affixing wires to corresponding terminals in any two connectors when the connectors are placed directly opposite each other and close together. The wire-receiving portions of terminals in both connectors are placed adjacent to each other and only that space necessary for convenient travel of the wires between terminals remains. After both rows of terminals are joined all of the wires are made to extend from one side of the two-connector assembly. A third connector is then attached to these wires to form the base of the T. As the wires remain parallel throughout this operation, little difficulty is encountered in maintaining the proper wiring pattern.
It is an object of this invention to provide a compact, easily assembled tap-connector for multi-conductor cable. A further object is to allow use of a standard multi-contact connector, of the type already in use with multi-conductor cable, as the principal component of such a tap-connector. A third object is to provide a basic tap-connector design which can be utilized in several different configurations which employ different combinations of mateable connectors. A still further object is to employ a tap-connector design in which each of the possible alternate configurations may be assembled with the same set of assembly apparatus and with essentially the same set of operations for all configurations. One more object is to provide a means of fabricating a tap-connector using standard connectors and the minimum of interconnecting wire while employing relatively simple techniques for affixing the wire to the terminals in each connector.